CCRI is the largest specialist rural research centre in the UK, having expertise in all aspects of research in policy and planning for the countryside and the environment of the UK, Europe and further afield.

Jane Mills ‘expert’ at EU workshop

Jane Mills was an invited expert at the EU workshop “Interactive innovation in action – Multi-actor project learning from each other” on 8th March, which was run by the agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-Agri) in Brussels.

Jane attended as a representative of the SoilCare project to share experiences of its approach to multi-actor projects and to learn from others. Some of the EU projects that CCRI is involved in are multi-actor projects which aim to try to bridge the gap between science and practice. This approach ensures that knowledge is co-created with practice, scientists, advisers, enterprises, NGOs, etc who join in the project activities from beginning to end. In this way, projects are focused on real problems or opportunities that farmers, foresters or others are facing and the solutions developed are practical and widely-acceptable.

The overall aim of the workshop was to contribute to the implementation of multi-actor projects of the H2020 Work Programme, a new participatory R&I approach which started as from the first H2020 call 2014. To improve the impact and outreach of the MA projects, the event aimed to incentivise exchange of best practices on a number of emerging issues linked to the running projects. A number of inspiring examples were presented and discussions took place on how to manage Horizon 2020 Multi-Actor projects successfully. The outcome of the workshop will help the European Commission to improve its guidance towards MA project partners and coordinators.